In Moths Of Africa, Volume 2, 44 species of the subfamily Rivulinae, 198 of Hypeninae, 290 of Herminiinae and 30 of Hypenodinae are described and figured.
So far, no systematic survey of the moths of the Erebidae subfamilies Rivulinae, Hypeninae, Herminiinae and Hypenodinae of the African Continent has ever been made, either a faunistic analysis or even a check-list of species.
For each species, a diagnosis and the geographical range are given, and when known, details of habitat preference and biology. All species are presented with their full name and references to the original description, with fully referenced synonyms. Special emphasis is given to descriptions and coloured illustrations, and to figures of genitalia features of both sexes, which were selected from more than 5,000 dissections. Male and female genitalia of nearly all species are illustrated, and, in some cases, distribution maps are provided.
DNA sequencing was performed for approx. 600 Ethiopian African specimens. The handling of the sequence divergences for the barcode region follows Ratnasingham & Hebert (2007) using the Kimura 2 Parameter model, employing the analytical tools on BOLD (cf. Hausmann, 2011). The results of DNA sequencing are specified in eight tables with Neighbour Joining Trees. All sequence records, trace files and images are available and accessible in the Barcode of Life Data System (Ratnasingham & Hebert 2007).
According to the large size of the African Continent and the large distances, the species’ distributions, which vary from narrow endemism to global occurrence, the specific barcodes arise some identification problems whenever intraspecific variation blurs the ‘barcode gap’ which is critical to assign specimens to their correct Linnaean species name.
All species are illustrated in colour and it is hoped that these illustrations alone can serve as a source for the identification of superficially identifiable species. All species are arranged in biogeographical categories, according to the definitions of those units at the first setout.
This review of the African Rivulinae, Hypeninae, Herminiinae and Hypenodinae includes descriptions of one genus, 252 species and 6 subspecies new to science.